Integrating a third party storefront into Canvas LMS

[AnnaS1]

Hi! I am a Canvas Admin for a very small team that does not include a tech person.

A third party storefront provider (same functions as Catalog) would like to integrate with us, to display our courses and do payment processing.

We would need to automatically receive information from them about each registration and give access to the relevant course.

(Ideally we would also be able to pass info back to them about student progress, but that isn't necessary to start with.)

I have no idea where to look for information on how to achieve this in Canvas. Can anybody point me in the right direction? All help gratefully received!

Thanks

[zgambino-ce]

Hi Anna,

Welcome to the next level of Canvas Administration 😄

I would start out by looking into the Canvas API. Specifically, the SIS_CSV methods of managing users, courses, enrollments, etc. These formats don't need to be processed by the API (you may already be familiar with the SIS Import tool), but if you're looking to automate things, this is a familiar place to start.
https://canvas.instructure.com/doc/api/file.sis_csv.html

You'll quickly realize that you might need a new toolset to help you learn more about the Canvas API and do some testing against the BETA and TEST instances. I would recommend looking into Postman:
https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Developers-Group/API-Testing-Postman/ba-p/272235

This script, written by a community member, has saved me TONS of hours getting started with Canvas API in Postman:
https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Developers-Group/Postman-Canvas-API-collection/ba-p/400835

And once you're feeling comfortable with the Canvas API, there are MORE APIs related to Instructure services here:
https://developerdocs.instructure.com/services/canvas

So, there's the rabbit hole. 😄 

Good luck!

[adam_marshall]

The implication is that you would get the vendors of 3rd party application to add code to fetch CSV files detailing your courses. They would process this and display a course list.

When a user says they want to join a course, an enrolments CSV would be posted back to Canvas containing the User ID and Course ID. (Clearly the User ID would have to be common between the systems so maybe you'd want the storefront to be an LTI tool.)

I hope that makes it more clear.

Adam